Photo courtesy of The British Library
“It’s how innovators get their innovations, how artists get their creative ideas, how visionaries get their vision, how scientists make their discoveries, and how good ideas of every kind arise in the human mind.”
William Duggan
Author and Senior Lecturer in Business at Columbia Business School
A few weeks ago, I went out to several Facebook groups centred around coaching and personal transformation, and ran a short poll that produced some fascinating results. I asked them to choose which of the following statements they agreed with more:
A) You can achieve anything you want if you believe in yourself, set clear goals and work hard.
OR
B) You can achieve many things if you prepare for opportunity, see it, and act on it.
I invite you to take a moment for yourself and reflect on these. Which do you agree with more? (I’ll share my results in a moment.) I got the idea for this poll (and the questions) from William Duggan’s excellent book “Strategic Intuition”. Duggan is a senior lecturer in business at Columbia Business School, and when he asks these questions at the start of workshops on strategy, he finds that most American students answer “A) You can achieve anything you want if you believe in yourself, set clear goals and work hard.” Duggan has done this experiment with business school students, executives, army officers and non-profit leaders, and the results are always the same. He explains, however, that non-Americans tend more often to answer “B) You can achieve many things if you prepare for opportunity, see it, and act on it.”
When I first read Duggan’s questions, I chose “B” right away. Here’s why:
Why I didn’t choose A
– While goals can be useful for focusing your attention, I’ve never been able to get too excited about them. In particular I find the SMART goals that are my namesake unutterably dull and uninspiring.
– Self-belief is over-rated. Personally my levels of self-belief ebb and flow depending on my mood. Why? Because self-belief is just thinking, and our thinking changes like the weather, so I do my best not to set too much store by it.
– Hard work can be very helpful, but it’s no guarantee of anything. Some of the very successful people I know achieve results 100 times bigger than those of other people I know, and they’re not working 100 times as hard (or even twice as hard).
Why I did choose B
– Since I was a teenager, I’ve recognised the value of studying, experimenting, taking action and practicing. From learning the guitar, to experimenting with language patterns, to writing articles, to speaking with audiences, I’ve recognised that if you want to get better at a real-world skill, you need to prepare the ground. This means studying, deepening your understanding, experimenting taking action and practicing.
– Many of my own successes look like they’ve been the result of having an insight while being in the right place at the right time.
– Many of the things I’ve achieved are things I would never have set as a goal, either because I would have been afraid to, or I wouldn’t have thought of it. But when the opportunity arose, I decided to act with courage, and took it.
William Duggan’s investigations into strategy square with my intuitive sense of it, but the popularity of answer A he attributes to a popular “rags to riches” myth in American culture that started in the 1800s (Eg. In the Horatio Alger’s stories of poor boys made good) and has been recycled by success gurus ever since. This, despite the fact that answer A turns out to be a surprisingly unhelpful attitude when it comes to accomplishing something big.
Duggan explains that option B is far more reliable; that if you prepare for opportunity, you open yourself to the arrival of a “flash of insight” that is found over and over again at the source of strategic victories. He explains that this flash of intuition is “…the key element in some of the greatest achievements in human history: how Bill Gates founded Microsoft, how Picasso found his style, how the civil rights movement finally succeeded, how the Google guys conquered the Internet, how Napoleon conquered Europe, and so on through the ages.”
So here are the results of my polls. While some people didn’t agree with either statement, the results for those who took part were consistent across all the groups: Of the 163 people who voted, 35 of the respondents agreed more with statement A (just over 20%) while 128 agreed more with statement B (just under 80%). This is terrific news, and runs counter to Duggan’s explorations (despite the fact that a huge number of the people in the Facebook groups I polled are American citizens). It suggests that people who are oriented in the direction of personal transformation, coaching and the principles behind clarity are intuitively moving away from an unhelpful “success strategy” and waking up to a healthier and more impactful one (which also happens to have been the one used by many of the great innovators through history).
By the way: As you may have guessed, I love books. If you’ve got a book in you and you’re keen to get it out into the world, check out the PS below for something you may find intriguing.
Have a great week!
I’m looking forward to your input and feedback on this, so please post your comments on the blog. Thanks! If you want to learn more about how you can see through the outside-in misunderstanding, and start waking up to the principles behind clarity, you can explore the materials here at www.JamieSmart.com or read my book, the #1 bestseller CLARITY: Clear Mind, Better Performance, Bigger Results. or my new #1 bestseller The Little book of Clarity
To your increasing clarity,
Big love
Jamie
********
PS. I’m looking for six super-specific people for my next pilot programme. Here’s what I’m looking for:
– You are an experienced and successful coach, trainer, consultant or change-worker (E.g. Management Consultant, Transformational Coach, Platform Speaker, Workshop Leader etc)…
– You’ve been in business and seeing clients *professionally* for at least 2 years, and have been developing your understanding and approach for quite a bit longer than that (i.e. you’ve got your own way of working, complete with “war stories”, your own insights and a proven track-record of engaging and impacting your clients in ways that they pay decent money for)…
– Chances are, you came to the conclusion quite a while ago that if you had your own book, it would further establish you as an authority in your marketplace, and make a big difference to your business in terms of visibility, credibility and cash-flow, HOWEVER…
– You simply don’t have the time, patience or inclination to spend years developing a unique writing style and furiously word-smithing between 25,000 and 35,000 words of hard-wrought, non-fiction goodness. In fact, if you’re the person I’m looking for, you’re probably too busy hustling (growing your business, serving your clients and bringing home the bacon) to embark on an extended literary write-a-thon…
– You have a book in you, but you haven’t written it yet, and you may be starting to wonder if it’s ever going to get written…
– You have a coachable spirit, and are willing to step out of your comfort zone if necessary…
– You’re decisive and effective; you love getting things done and making things happen…
– You’re aware that your expertise has limits, and are willing to accept high-quality guidance / support where necessary…
– You’re an enthusiastic, friendly people-person, and…
– You can keep a secret.
If that’s you, then send an email to info@jamiesmart.com and let me know where you’re located and a little about yourself and about the book you have in mind (if you don’t know what to tell me about, look at the list above for inspiration). Change the subject line to “Project Dynamo”. I’ll be drawing up a shortlist in the next few weeks. Talk to you soon! J